


You Know There's Another Three Movies, Right?

by likethenight



Series: Writers' Month 2020 [25]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Characters Watching The Lord of the Rings Movies, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Television Watching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:00:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26160763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethenight/pseuds/likethenight
Summary: Hal and Jack watch theLord of the Ringsmovies. Jack actually enjoys them, which is rather more than Hal had expected.Ficlet written for Writers' Month 2020, day 28, prompt "fantasy".
Relationships: Hal Peacock (Original Character)/Jack Outlaw | Jack McQueen (Original Character), Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Writers' Month 2020 [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867720
Comments: 4
Kudos: 2
Collections: Writer's Month 2020





	You Know There's Another Three Movies, Right?

**Author's Note:**

> This was a tough one to decide what to write! Most of my fandoms are fantasy-based anyway and I didn't fancy writing a fantasy AU of any of the others, given that AUs aren't really my thing. I'm not comfortable with the _other_ popular interpretation of the term. And so...here's some more of my OCs Hal and Jack, this time watching LotR because that's the uppermost in my mind at the moment. 
> 
> Hal and Jack are the main characters from a novel I've been writing for a very long time entitled Two of a Kind. They are both ex-street-kid musicians who spend the course of the novel very slowly realising that they are actually everything in the world to each other (they are the archetypal slow-burn idiots in love). Hal has a daughter, Natalie, who lives with her mother Anita. Jack is - well. Jack is hard to explain but he is very damaged, very unsocialised, somewhat feral, and also incredibly grumpy; meanwhile Hal is much calmer, but still rather damaged. They each play guitar in bands, Hal in one and Jack in another. By the point that this ficlet takes place, they have been living together in an established relationship for some time, and Hal has been helping Jack adjust to dealing with people, something at which Jack has never had much experience, for various reasons.

It’s Sunday afternoon, and Jack and I are stretched out on the sofa, idly channel-surfing. Well, I’m channel-surfing, a beer in hand, and Jack is tapping away at his laptop, working on something for one of his clients. The freelance software developer game pays well enough, but it does seem to involve working all the hours there are. 

Not that I mind. He’s good at it, he enjoys it, and it enables us to live somewhat better than if we were depending on what I make building guitars. Besides, it means he’s here, with me, on the sofa. 

I flick through the TV guide, stopping on a channel that is apparently about to start showing the first Lord of the Rings movie. I watched them years ago with Anita - she’s a huge fan and has all the DVD box sets and so on - but haven’t seen them since, and I wonder whether they might appeal to Jack. His tastes are a little unpredictable, but he’s surprised me by liking a few things I didn’t expect him to like, so I suppose it’s worth a go. I click the button to select the channel, and try to tune out the adverts before the film starts. 

The intro catches Jack’s attention, with its soft, mysterious narration and striking imagery, and by the time the Shire appears on screen he’s set his laptop aside, though he frowns in confusion at the Hobbits. 

“Bear with it,” I tell him, “it’s all relevant.”

He snorts, but he settles back against me and I slide an arm around his shoulders, carding my fingers through his hair. 

As the film progresses, I realise that Jack is completely engrossed in it; he’s not interrupting to ask questions or comment on the plot nearly as often as he usually does, only muttering under his breath occasionally, and when it finishes with Frodo and Sam looking out over the mountaintops to Mordor, he sits up and looks at me, outraged.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me. It ends there?”

“There are three films,” I point out, and he shakes his head. 

“Fuck’s sake. Do we have the others?”

“Probably on Netflix or something, I guess.” I flick the controller and browse to the Netflix interface, tapping into the search box; I am not at all technologically minded, but I’ve learned how to use Jack’s fancy TV, mainly because it comes with all these extra opportunities for entertainment. “I’ll warn you though, they’re all about four hours long.”

“I don’t care,” he says, “I need to know what happens.”

So I put on the second film, and when that finishes, yawning slightly, I put on the third one. By the end, if I didn’t know better I’d have thought he’d been on the verge of tears more than once, but I’m wise enough not to mention it, and it’s not like I wasn’t either. 

“They actually did it,” he murmurs during one of the several ending scenes. “Two tiny little fuckers up against the big bad wolf and they actually fucking did it.”

“They did,” I tell him softly, my fingers drawing circles on his upper arm. “Sometimes it happens.” 

“We did it too,” he says after a moment. “I mean, it took us fucking longer than this lot, but -“

“Yes, we did,” I whisper, and I tilt his chin up to kiss him; I’ve learned to make the most of these moments of quiet introspection before he yanks his attitude back on again.

“You can’t tell me they’re not all incredibly fucking gay for each other, though,” he says as we watch Frodo and Sam say goodbye to each other, and I laugh out loud.

“No, I can’t. But then…so are we, right?”

“Too fucking right,” he says, and then he swings himself up to kneel astride my lap, and that’s the end of our film criticism for the night.

Later - much later - I prop myself up on one elbow and grin at him.

“You know there’s another three movies, right?”

“Oh fucking hell, seriously, there’s _more_?” His eyes light up, and I lean down to kiss him.

“There’s more. Kind of a prequel, I think, I’ve never seen them. But I’m not putting them on now because it’s four in the fucking morning and I need to go to sleep.”

“Tomorrow,” he says, and I laugh.

“Tomorrow. By the way, as I understand it from Anita, the other three are just as gay.”

Jack grins. “Fucking _perfect_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Jack, to Hal, after watching the Hobbit movies: you cannot seriously tell me they're not all fucking. Jesus. I thought the other lot were gay for each other but this is off the fucking _scale_.
> 
> XDDDD (if you haven't gathered by now, Jack is the sort of person who has absolutely no filter and says what everyone else is thinking...)


End file.
